The Libdems have fallen to 12% in the latest YouGov poll, published today in the Sunday Times.

The polls also show that Labour continues to gain from the party. It now stands at 38%, just 4 pts behind the Conservatives at 42%.

This is part of a long term trend, and the collapse of the Liberals has been the silver lining around the dark cloud of this administration. They are the weak link in a coalition with the approval of about 40% of voters. As pollsters have pointed out, the fact that the government has the approval of less people than would vote for the constituent parties is in stark contrast to the approval rates for New Labour for most of its first term, which remained well above the number of people who would actually vote for the party.

Given the prevailing ideological disorientation, the absence of mass resistance to the recession, the hatred for the bankers, the contempt for the MPs who like big expense accounts and are on sale to American lobbyists, and the utter alienation from the main parties - well, given all this, a space is naturally opening for an 'honest broker' who can appear to transcend the "special interests" and efficiently manage our way through the present crisis. The trouble is, whoever governs for the next five years is about to watch that space disappear.

The Liberals' participation in what is openly a radical rightist attack on the welfare state has completely undermined their position as an 'honest broker', far more rapidly than the social polarisation produced by the cuts might have done had they not been part of the coalition. Much as I understand why some people were tempted by the Liberals before the 2010 election (less so why some thought the Liberals would complete some half-finished bourgeois revolution, Charter 88-style), I take sincere pleasure in their self-destruction.